Discussion Questions

Sleeper-Smith, Susan. ‘[A]n Unpleasant Transaction on This Frontier’: Challenging Female Autonomy and Authority at Michilimackinac.” Journal of the Early Republic 25, no. 3 (2005): 417–43. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30043337.

1. How does foregrounding the significance of kinship change how we tend to understand Indigenous and European-American relations?
2. How did the role of native women fur traders shift over time as the Great Lakes shifted from French, British, and then U.S. sovereignty?
3. Compare the lives of Elizabeth Mitchell, Magdelaine Marcot La Framboise, and Therese Marcot Lasaliere Schindler. How were they shaped by historical circumstances? How did they assert their agency in navigating between diverse communities? How did their gender identities and kinship networks serve as assets or obstacles?

Miles, Tiya. “The Narrative of Nancy, A Cherokee Woman.” Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 29, no. 2/3 (2008): 59-80.

1. What does Nancy’s testimony suggest about her knowledge about war, politics and legal rights? What does her testimony reveal about the experiences of Cherokee women in the midst of the U.S. Revolutionary War?
2. What was Nancy’s race? How does Tiya Miles determine this? What does Nancy’s race reveal about kinship and sexual relationships, as well as the legal categorization and cultural significance of race?

Jones-Rogers, Stephanie. “‘[S]he could … spare one ample breast for the profit of her owner’: white mothers and enslaved wet nurses’ invisible labor in American slave markets,” Slavery & Abolition, 38:2, 337-355 (2017).

1. How did white mothers commodify enslaved women’s reproductive bodies, their breast milk, and their nutritive and maternal care?
2. Why do you think enslaved west nurses have been relatively invisible in historical studies of American slavery?
3. Look carefully at the advertisements for wet nurses and for the sale of enslaved women. What do they tell us about the labor that was desired by white slaveowners of enslaved women? What aspects of enslaved women did their owners think would make them attractive to purchase? What do the advertisements reveal about the lives and families of wet nurses? What do they reveal about the role of white women in the market for wet nurses?

Barclay, Jenifer. “Mothering the ‘Useless’: Black Motherhood, Disability, and Slavery.” Women, Gender, and Families of Color 2, no. 2 (2014).

1. How does a focus on disability change or deepen our knowledge of the experiences of children and mothers under slavery?
2. In a political economy that prioritizes able-bodiedness in order to ensure productivity, what is the value of unpaid maternal care?

Camp, Stephanie.  "The Pleasures of Resistance: Enslaved Women and Body Politics in the Plantation South, 1830-1861." The Journal of Southern History 68, no. 3 (2002): 533-72.

1. In what ways did enslaved people challenge planter power over their bodies? What are the three “bodies” that enslaved people possess?
2. How is partying a political act?
3. Define the idea of “rival geography” and how it is relevant for this essay.

Freedman, Estelle B. “Crimes which Startle and Horrify”: Gender, Age, and the Racialization of Sexual Violence in White American Newspapers, 1870-1900 .” Journal of the History of Sexuality 20, no. 3 (2011): 465-97.

1. What does it mean to characterize rape as a “linguistic” as well as a “physical” act?
2. How were “rape narratives” circulated and disseminated in the late 19th century? How did they define “which women may charge which men with the crime of forceful, unwanted sex and whose accounts will be believed”?
3. How did the “white” press represent race in their reports about rape? What are the implications for perpetrators of rape as well as survivors of rape? Select a newspaper that predominantly caters to an African American readership. How do the stories about rape replicate or differ from white press representations?

Fisher, Simon. “Challenging Dissemblance in Pauli Murray Historiography, Sketching a History of the Trans New Negro,” Journal of African American History, 104 (2019).

1. What forms of “dissemblance” is the author seeking to challenge in the historical studies about Pauli Murray?
2. How might Murray have learned about transgender and transsexual life in the 1920s and 1930s Harlem? What terms, concepts, and practices were in circulation at the time and how did these map onto her own sense of identity?

Pascoe, Peggy. “Miscegenation Law, Court Cases, and Ideologies of ‘Race’ in Twentieth-Century America,” Journal of American History, June 1996, Vol. 83, No. 1, pp. 44-69.

1. Define miscegenation. Why were there legal prohibitions against miscegenation? What is at stake in drawing these racial boundaries?
2. What role does the legal system play in defining race? How do courts/judges determine race? How does Pascoe use court cases to discuss the evolution of racial ideas?
3. Explain the term racialism. Why does Peggy Pascoe use this term? What is modernist racial ideology?  How is color blindness a racial ideology?

DeLisle, Christine Taitano.  “A History of Chamorro Nurse-Midwives in Guam and a 'Placental Politics' for Indigenous Feminism.” Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific, Issue 37, March 2015.

1. What is the significance of burying the placenta within Chamorro culture and among other Indigenous Pacific communities?
2. Who are pattera? How do they play a role in negotiating U.S. empire, militarism, and modernity in Guam?
3. What is the significance of asking the pattera to serve as matlina to the child that is delivered?

King, Farina. “Intergenerational Ties: Diné Memories of the Crownpoint Boarding School during the 1960s.” New Mexico Historical Review 93, no. 4 (Fall 2018): 399-420.

1. Why does King seek the approval of Dine community members to approve her research project on the Navajo boarding school experiences? What might we learn from this approach towards research? Farina King emphasizes the “intergenerational ties” that bind her to the Boarding School experience. In what ways does this article shed light on intergenerational ruptures and connections?
2. Explain the concept of “survivance” and why it is relevant for understanding boarding schools? What was the intended purpose of boarding schools and how did Native American students resist these efforts?3. Were there differences between how boys and girls experienced or recounted their experiences at the Crownpoint Boarding School?

Tsu, Cecilia.  “Sex, Lies, and Agriculture: Reconstructing Japanese Immigrant Gender Relations in Rural California, 1900–1913.” Pacific Historical Review 78, no. 2 (2009): 171-209.

1. Japanese Americans were one of the groups that was lauded to be “model minorities” in the mid-1960s. How does this representation challenge model minority representations of Japanese Americans?
2. How is the agricultural context of this study significant for the gender dynamics among Japanese immigrants? What are some of the laws that shaped the lives of Japanese immigrants? What do the experiences of violence, sexual assault, and death tell us about life among Isseis? What do we learn about the experience of marriage among Japanese immigrants?

Mabalon, Dawn Bohulano. “‘Up to My Elbows in Rice!’: Women Building Communities and Sustaining Families in Pre- 1965 Filipina/o America". Our Voices, Our Histories, Edited by Shirley Hune and Gail M. Nomura, 69-86. New York: New York University Press, 2020.

1. How did Filipina/o Americans conceptualize family?  How did women’s labor sustain these forms of family?
2. What is the significance of food in creating a collective ethnic identity? How does the history of Filipina/o food reflect empire and migration?
3. In what spaces and contexts did Filipinas cook food? How did their culinary activities change over time?

Speed, Shannon.  “A Dreadful Mosaic: Rethinking Gender Violence through the Lives of Indigenous Women Migrants.” Gendered Perspectives on International Development: Working Papers, no. 304 (2014): 78–94.

1. How does this article reconceptualize gender violence?  What is meant by a mosaic vs. a continuum of violence? How does speed read agency in these women’s lives?
2. Consider the three migration stories told in the article. What are the lessons that the author draws from each person’s experiences?  What additional insights do you have?
3. How do race, class, immigration status, and neoliberalism shape gendered experiences of violence?

Glymph, Thavolia. "I'm a Radical Black Girl": Black Women Unionists and the Politics of Civil War History." Journal of the Civil War Era, 8, no. 3 (2018): 359-87. 

1. What is unionism? What was “radical” about Black women’s unionism during the Civil War in Texas?
2. What is the significance of the “homespun dress,” and what did it symbolize?

Prieto, Laura R. "A Delicate Subject: Clemencia López, Civilized Womanhood, and the Politics of Anti-Imperialism." The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 12, no. 2 (2013): 199-233. 

1. How did ideas about gender shape Clemencía Lopez’s anti-imperialist advocacy and campaign for Filipino sovereignty? Were there differences between Filipino and American concepts of womanhood?
2. How did Clemencía Lopez navigate racial and class dynamics in her lobbying for her brothers’ release, and did race and class affect how Americans perceived her?

Cahill, Cathleen.  “‘Our Democracy and the American Indian’: Citizenship, Sovereignty, and the Native Vote in the 1920s.” Journal of Women’s History 32, no. 1 (2020): 41–51. 

1. How did Laura Cornelius Kellogg and Gerturde Bonnin/Zitkala-Ša conceive of the connections between Native women’s suffrage and the larger question of Native sovereignty? Did they have a shared vision, or did they diverge?
2. How did Kellogg and Bonnin’s activism incorporate Indigenous political, social, and/or cultural practices? Give an example.

Ruiz, Vicki L. “Class Acts: Latina Feminist Traditions, 1900–1930,” The American Historical Review, Volume 121, Issue 1, February 2016, 1–16.

1. Where do Luisa Capetillo’s and Luisa Moreno’s transnational labor and feminist ideologies intersect? Where do they diverge? What accounts for these differences and/or similarities?
2. How does Ruiz perceive the change from Rosa Rodríguez López into Luisa Moreno, and what sparked this transformation? How do these “two women” differ?

Sato, Courtney. “A Picture of Peace”: Friendship in Interwar Pacific Women’s Internationalism.” Qui Parle 1 December 2018; 27 (2): 475–510.

1. What are the gendered dimensions of interwar, internationalist peace movements? How did the concept of “friendship” take on political meanings?
2. What are the primary source materials Sato utilizes, and how are these sources different from more “traditional” ones?
3. How does Sato’s choice of sources allow her to privilege marginalized histories?

Marino, Katherine M. "Transnational Pan-American Feminism: The Friendship of Bertha Lutz and Mary Wilhelmine Williams, 1926–1944." Journal of Women's History 26, no. 2 (2014): 63-87. 

1. In what ways did Bertha Lutz and Mary Wilhelmine Williams see the connections between gender equality and world peace? How did they conceptualize pacifism as centered on “inherent” gendered differences? Is this framing exclusionary? Why, or why not?
2. Lutz and Williams’ Pan-American friendship also mirrors their beliefs on the unique connections between the United States and Brazil. Why similarities and/or shared histories or experiences did they see between these two countries?

Guise, Holly Miowak. “Elizabeth Peratrovich, the Alaska Native Sisterhood, and Indigenous Women’s Activism, 1945-1948.” In Suffrage at 100, Edited by Stacie Taranto and Leandra Zarnow, 147-164. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020.

1. How does motherhood factor into Alaska Native women’s political activism? Give at least one example.
2. How did the work of Elizabeth Peratrovich and the Alaska Native Sisterhood combat racial inequality? What successes did they achieve?

Materson, Lisa. “Ruth Reynolds, Solidarity Activism, and the Struggle against U.S. Colonialism in Puerto Rico.” Modern American History 2, no. 2 (2019): 183–87. 

1. What does Materson mean by “patches” to describe the relationship between the United States and Puerto Rico?
2. How did the United States attempt to suppress Reynolds? Give specific examples.
3. How did Reynolds counter these suppression efforts, and how did she pave the way for subsequent generations of activists?

Spencer, Robyn Ceanne. "Engendering the Black Freedom Struggle: Revolutionary Black Womanhood and the Black Panther Party in the Bay Area, California." Journal of Women's History 20, no. 1 (2008).

1. How did women in the Black Panther Party combat gender discrimination within the organization? Provide two specific examples.
2. How does Spencer discuss the connections between gender equity and revolutionary action within the Black Panther Party?

Chavez, Marisela. “Refocusing Chicana International Feminism:  Photographs, Postmemory, and Political Trauma.” In Chicana Movidas : New Narratives of Activism and Feminism in the Movement Era, Edited by Dionne Espinoza, María Eugenia Cotera, Maylei Blackwell. First edition, 317-326. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2018.

1. How do photographers and subjects in the images assert a certain amount of agency in documenting their own experiences?
2. How does Chavez think about visual texts compared to written sources in documenting women’s lives?

Naber, Nadine. “Arab and Black Feminisms: Joint Struggle and
Transnational Anti-Imperialist Activism.” Departures in Critical Qualitative Research 1 September 2016; 5 (3): 116–125.

1. How did U.S. based activists, like Burnham, see racial and gender oppression in the United States as interconnected to other international feminist movements and social issues pertaining to women of color?
2. What does the international orientation of Black and Arab women’s social justice efforts say about structural inequalities? How does Naber place this in connection with U.S. militarism, colonialism, and/or capitalism? 

White, Deborah Gray. “Guns and Motherhood: A Millennial Maternalism.” In Lost in the USA: American Identity from the Promise Keepers to the Million Mom March, 157-181. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2017.

1. How did the Million Mom March bring women together from across racial and socioeconomic backgrounds?
2. How did the organization also highlight the divisions within and between diverse groups of women?
3. What does White describe as the tension between “maternalism” and “feminism?” How did concepts of gender shape the opposition of the Million Mom March by pro-gun advocates?

Blackwell, Maylei. "Geographies of Difference: Transborder Organizing and Indigenous Women's Activism." Social Justice 42, no. 3/4 (142) (2015): 137-54.

1. In your own words, describe what Blackwell means by “geographies of difference.” Give examples of how this concept unfolds in both Mexico and California.
2. How did the FIOB supported workshops in Huajuapan de León and Los Angeles demonstrate the importance of intergenerational organizing? What were the differences and/or similarities in the roles that youth participants played in each of these workshops?